Dispatches
Playing Double
A UW pianist gets hands-on with a unique instrument.
Christopher Taylor has two pianos in his campus studio. One has eighty-eight keys; the other has almost twice that many.
Taylor, an assistant professor of music, is the unofficial keeper of a double-keyboard Steinway. Featuring eighty-eight keys on the bottom and seventy-six on top, it’s the only such instrument the piano maker ever manufactured. Made in Steinway’s factory in Hamburg, Germany, in 1929, and based on the design of Hungarian composer Emanuel Moor, the piano arrived at the School of Music in 1961, when artist in residence Gunnar Johansen convinced officials to buy it.
Christopher Taylor has two pianos in his campus studio. One has eighty-eight keys; the other has almost twice that many.
Taylor, an assistant professor of music, is the unofficial keeper of a double-keyboard Steinway. Featuring eighty-eight keys on the bottom and seventy-six on top, it’s the only such instrument the piano maker ever manufactured. Made in Steinway’s factory in Hamburg, Germany, in 1929, and based on the design of Hungarian composer Emanuel Moor, the piano arrived at the School of Music in 1961, when artist in residence Gunnar Johansen convinced officials to buy it.
Taylor first found out about the piano in 2004, after the death of Johansen’s widow. “I had never been aware of its existence, and the fact that the university owns it was a complete surprise,” he says. “Of course, I was burning up with curiosity. At that point I had no idea how it worked — if it had strings or double strings, what was going on.”
A peek under the lid shows the instrument has one set of hammers and strings. When Taylor plays a note on the upper keyboard, the same key is pulled down on the lower keyboard.
“I didn’t expect that, but it became easy enough to ignore,” he says. “In a way, it’s kind of comforting.”
The piano also has four pedals, compared with the two or three found on a standard model. The fourth is the octave pedal, which “doubles” each note Taylor plays on the lower keyboard, playing it one octave higher on the upper keyboard.
A peek under the lid shows the instrument has one set of hammers and strings. When Taylor plays a note on the upper keyboard, the same key is pulled down on the lower keyboard.
“I didn’t expect that, but it became easy enough to ignore,” he says. “In a way, it’s kind of comforting.”
The piano also has four pedals, compared with the two or three found on a standard model. The fourth is the octave pedal, which “doubles” each note Taylor plays on the lower keyboard, playing it one octave higher on the upper keyboard.
When Taylor first played the instrument, it clearly needed some work done, which he mentioned during his first performance on the double keyboard during a 2005 concert at Mills Hall. Chancellor John D. Wiley MS’65, PhD’68, who is a fan of Taylor’s and was in the audience, helped to secure private funding to send the piano to the Steinway factory in Queens, New York, where it was refurbished in fall 2006. Taylor says that while School of Music technician Baoli Liu had some ideas about how to do the necessary repairs, Steinway had to improvise solutions, since drawings or other historical documents for reference no longer exist.
“At first, I think they were kind of thunderstruck by this thing and weren’t entirely sure what to do with it,” Taylor says. “It’s not in any of the piano technician training manuals.” Instead of shipping the entire piano to Steinway, the School of Music slid out the keys and hammers, a single unit called the “action stack.” A Steinway technician dissected the action stack, taking pictures as he went along, then created and installed custom-made springs and pins to replace those that were broken. By the time that work was complete and the keyboards were reunited with the piano, the difference was noticeable. For example, Taylor says, keys are lighter to the touch and feel more consistent.
For a gifted musician such as Taylor, the instrument opens up possibilities that aren’t feasible on a single keyboard, including the ability to cover two-octave intervals with one hand. Yet he had only a single thought when he first heard about the piano: “I’ve got to try the Goldbergs.”
“At first, I think they were kind of thunderstruck by this thing and weren’t entirely sure what to do with it,” Taylor says. “It’s not in any of the piano technician training manuals.” Instead of shipping the entire piano to Steinway, the School of Music slid out the keys and hammers, a single unit called the “action stack.” A Steinway technician dissected the action stack, taking pictures as he went along, then created and installed custom-made springs and pins to replace those that were broken. By the time that work was complete and the keyboards were reunited with the piano, the difference was noticeable. For example, Taylor says, keys are lighter to the touch and feel more consistent.
For a gifted musician such as Taylor, the instrument opens up possibilities that aren’t feasible on a single keyboard, including the ability to cover two-octave intervals with one hand. Yet he had only a single thought when he first heard about the piano: “I’ve got to try the Goldbergs.”
He had previously played J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, originally written for manual double harpsichord, on a standard piano. But the “voices” cross one another quite a bit, resulting in a lot of acrobatics to avoid tangling up the pianist’s hands.
Taylor “learned to negotiate the collisions,” he says, when he first played the Goldberg Variations several years ago. Watching him perform a section of the variations on just a single keyboard reveals the challenges: the body contorts a bit, one hand reaches around the other to hit certain notes, and, at some points, one hand practically has to play underneath the other. It makes it easy to understand why Taylor looked forward to trying the pieces on the unique piano, and why he hopes to do a recording.
He made a splash in classical music circles during the summer and fall when he used the double Steinway to perform the Goldberg Variations at the Ravinia Festival, outside of Chicago, and the Caramoor International Music Festival in Katonah, New York. Audience response was enthusiastic.
“Sometimes people expect to hear something totally unexpected and new,” Taylor says. “For people who are on audience right, they don’t necessarily perceive that much difference. Now, for people who are on audience left, on the other hand, they get an interesting show.”
— Jenny Price ’96
Taylor “learned to negotiate the collisions,” he says, when he first played the Goldberg Variations several years ago. Watching him perform a section of the variations on just a single keyboard reveals the challenges: the body contorts a bit, one hand reaches around the other to hit certain notes, and, at some points, one hand practically has to play underneath the other. It makes it easy to understand why Taylor looked forward to trying the pieces on the unique piano, and why he hopes to do a recording.
He made a splash in classical music circles during the summer and fall when he used the double Steinway to perform the Goldberg Variations at the Ravinia Festival, outside of Chicago, and the Caramoor International Music Festival in Katonah, New York. Audience response was enthusiastic.
“Sometimes people expect to hear something totally unexpected and new,” Taylor says. “For people who are on audience right, they don’t necessarily perceive that much difference. Now, for people who are on audience left, on the other hand, they get an interesting show.”
— Jenny Price ’96
A Mind-Mood Connection
Study links depression to abnormal emotional brain circuits.
Everyone has a bad day now and then. But for some clinically depressed individuals, the inability to shake off that down-in-the-dumps feeling may be rooted in emotional brain wiring, according to a recent UW study.
“It’s normal for people to have negative emotions in certain circumstances,” says Tom Johnstone, a researcher at the School of Medicine and Public Health and the Waisman Center. “One of the features of major depression is not that people have negative reactions to negative situations; it’s that they can’t pull themselves out of those negative emotional moods.”
In a brain imaging study, Johnstone and his colleagues found that healthy participants were able to consciously rein in their responses to emotionally negative images — such as car accidents and threatening-looking animals — by envisioning a more positive outcome than the one implied or by imagining the situation was acted out rather than real.
Despite similar mental efforts, as reflected by brain activity in regions known to help regulate neural emotional centers, depressed people were not able to quell their emotional responses. In fact, for many patients, their attempts actually boosted brain activity in an emotional brain center called the amygdala.
Everyone has a bad day now and then. But for some clinically depressed individuals, the inability to shake off that down-in-the-dumps feeling may be rooted in emotional brain wiring, according to a recent UW study.
“It’s normal for people to have negative emotions in certain circumstances,” says Tom Johnstone, a researcher at the School of Medicine and Public Health and the Waisman Center. “One of the features of major depression is not that people have negative reactions to negative situations; it’s that they can’t pull themselves out of those negative emotional moods.”
In a brain imaging study, Johnstone and his colleagues found that healthy participants were able to consciously rein in their responses to emotionally negative images — such as car accidents and threatening-looking animals — by envisioning a more positive outcome than the one implied or by imagining the situation was acted out rather than real.
Despite similar mental efforts, as reflected by brain activity in regions known to help regulate neural emotional centers, depressed people were not able to quell their emotional responses. In fact, for many patients, their attempts actually boosted brain activity in an emotional brain center called the amygdala.
“Those [healthy] individuals putting more cognitive effort into it are getting a bigger payoff in terms of decreasing activation in these emotional centers,” Johnstone explains. “In the depressed individuals, you find the exact opposite relationship — it seems the more effort they put in, the more activation there is in the amygdala.”
The research finding suggests that healthy people are able to effectively regulate their negative emotions through conscious effort, but that the necessary neural circuits are dysfunctional in many patients with depression. Since common psychological therapies for depression use mental strategies similar to those used in this study, this approach may help identify appropriate treatment methods for different patients, says Richard Davidson, study author and professor of psychiatry and psychology.
For example, he says, psychotherapy might benefit patients who find conscious emotional control effective in the scenarios provided in this study, but could be counterproductive for those patients whose mental attempts increase their emotional responses.
Identifying emotional brain circuits may also help focus the development of new treatment strategies for depression and other psychiatric disorders.
“If we understand where the brain circuits are that are important and how they are involved in regulating emotion,” says Johnstone, “then we can target them with different types of therapies.”
— Jill Sakai PhD ’06
The research finding suggests that healthy people are able to effectively regulate their negative emotions through conscious effort, but that the necessary neural circuits are dysfunctional in many patients with depression. Since common psychological therapies for depression use mental strategies similar to those used in this study, this approach may help identify appropriate treatment methods for different patients, says Richard Davidson, study author and professor of psychiatry and psychology.
For example, he says, psychotherapy might benefit patients who find conscious emotional control effective in the scenarios provided in this study, but could be counterproductive for those patients whose mental attempts increase their emotional responses.
Identifying emotional brain circuits may also help focus the development of new treatment strategies for depression and other psychiatric disorders.
“If we understand where the brain circuits are that are important and how they are involved in regulating emotion,” says Johnstone, “then we can target them with different types of therapies.”
— Jill Sakai PhD ’06
Student Watch: Rommate Research
For many alumni, a typical first encounter with a future roommate might have been a brief, sometimes awkward, phone call. Today’s students, however, can find out their roomies’ favorite hobbies, music, movies, books, and interests, not to mention see hundreds of photos, all before that first face-to-face meeting. Thanks to online social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, incoming freshmen have a great opportunity to begin building networks before their first fall semester. But they can also unknowingly create negative first impressions.
University Housing now advises students to be conscientious about the messages they relay about themselves through text and photos. “We try to make students aware that how they portray themselves on Facebook is exactly how they are going to be perceived by their future peers,” says University Housing director of marketing services Keri Robbins ’94, MS’00. “An inside joke among high school friends could be misconstrued by others.”
Housing officials also highlight these same points to current students, when the issue moves from prospective roommates to prospective employers. “Companies may also have access to these networks,” says Robbins, “and we point that out in our materials as well.”
— Ben Wischnewski ’05
University Housing now advises students to be conscientious about the messages they relay about themselves through text and photos. “We try to make students aware that how they portray themselves on Facebook is exactly how they are going to be perceived by their future peers,” says University Housing director of marketing services Keri Robbins ’94, MS’00. “An inside joke among high school friends could be misconstrued by others.”
Housing officials also highlight these same points to current students, when the issue moves from prospective roommates to prospective employers. “Companies may also have access to these networks,” says Robbins, “and we point that out in our materials as well.”
— Ben Wischnewski ’05
Recorded History
A campus treasure trove that preserves the past needs preservation.
A renowned scientist reveals that she once saved babysitting money to buy an antique microscope. A statistics professor pauses to read a poem he wrote. A library program director shares what she learned about reading habits while creating a jail literacy program. A recipient of the National Medal of Science describes growing up as a boy in post-Nazi East Germany.
Their interviews, plus more than eight hundred others, offer fascinating glimpses into the lives of those who joined the UW faculty and staff and went on to influence the campus’s guiding principles, culture, and most historic moments. More than three thousand hours of face-to-face structured chats — ones that draw out memories and opinions alike — now exist as an astounding collection of cassette tapes.
And that’s a problem. The tapes represent the central goal of the UW-Madison Oral History Program at UW Archives, a division of the UW-Madison Libraries: developing a narrative of university history over time. But time can be magnetic tape’s worst enemy, and the program worries about long-term deterioration.
A renowned scientist reveals that she once saved babysitting money to buy an antique microscope. A statistics professor pauses to read a poem he wrote. A library program director shares what she learned about reading habits while creating a jail literacy program. A recipient of the National Medal of Science describes growing up as a boy in post-Nazi East Germany.
Their interviews, plus more than eight hundred others, offer fascinating glimpses into the lives of those who joined the UW faculty and staff and went on to influence the campus’s guiding principles, culture, and most historic moments. More than three thousand hours of face-to-face structured chats — ones that draw out memories and opinions alike — now exist as an astounding collection of cassette tapes.
And that’s a problem. The tapes represent the central goal of the UW-Madison Oral History Program at UW Archives, a division of the UW-Madison Libraries: developing a narrative of university history over time. But time can be magnetic tape’s worst enemy, and the program worries about long-term deterioration.
With relatively modest funding and staffing, the program has focused on identifying interview subjects, conducting interviews, and indexing the results since it was first established in 1971. Now, with time marching on, plans include securing funding to allow the tapes to be digitized, a five-year project estimated to cost twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars annually.
Libraries Director Ken Frazier identifies the effort as a Wisconsin Idea initiative. “Digitizing these interviews will help preserve part of Wisconsin’s history while giving us the opportunity to make them accessible to listeners around the world,” he says.
The preservation project, says program director Troy Reeves, will take “the usual suspects: more people, more equipment, and more money.”
Switching to digital and, eventually, posting the interviews online, would also improve access for researchers and the public. Currently, listening to voices ranging from George Mosse to Donna Shalala to James Crow requires making an appointment at the program offices in Steenbock Library, or paying for a CD or cassette tape copy.
Libraries Director Ken Frazier identifies the effort as a Wisconsin Idea initiative. “Digitizing these interviews will help preserve part of Wisconsin’s history while giving us the opportunity to make them accessible to listeners around the world,” he says.
The preservation project, says program director Troy Reeves, will take “the usual suspects: more people, more equipment, and more money.”
Switching to digital and, eventually, posting the interviews online, would also improve access for researchers and the public. Currently, listening to voices ranging from George Mosse to Donna Shalala to James Crow requires making an appointment at the program offices in Steenbock Library, or paying for a CD or cassette tape copy.
Bob Lange MA’76, who has conducted many of the program’s interviews, says the subjects “provide the context of their lives” and that the collection “tells the university’s history through the people who have come and gone.” A committee brainstorms about and then selects future interview subjects. Although each talk averages five or six hours, some wrap up in just an hour, while the longest topped out at more than forty hours.
Interviewers generally follow a question outline, guiding subjects through their early education, their first years at UW-Madison, and their career progression. As interviewees answer questions, they hit upon themes others also have addressed — the Great Depression, the influx of GIs to campus after World War II, the Vietnam War years, academic freedom, and issues of gender and race.
Reeves hopes the collection can continue to grow, and says alumni can make that happen. He welcomes volunteers in Wisconsin and around the country who’d like to schedule an interview close to home, sit down for a chat, and record history.
For more information about the program, including an alphabetical list of all interviews, visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu/ORAL/oral.htm or call (608) 890-1899.
— Cindy Foss
Interviewers generally follow a question outline, guiding subjects through their early education, their first years at UW-Madison, and their career progression. As interviewees answer questions, they hit upon themes others also have addressed — the Great Depression, the influx of GIs to campus after World War II, the Vietnam War years, academic freedom, and issues of gender and race.
Reeves hopes the collection can continue to grow, and says alumni can make that happen. He welcomes volunteers in Wisconsin and around the country who’d like to schedule an interview close to home, sit down for a chat, and record history.
For more information about the program, including an alphabetical list of all interviews, visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu/ORAL/oral.htm or call (608) 890-1899.
— Cindy Foss
Meaningful Gestures
Hands may play the best supporting role in a teacher's lesson plans
The difference between a math student understanding a lesson or not being able to solve the problem at all could come down to the wave of a hand. It’s not magic — it’s a matter of getting educators to talk, and teach, with gestures.
UW-Madison psychology professor Martha Alibali calls the concept “visual scaffolding.” Along with curriculum and instruction professor Eric Knuth and educational psychology professor Mitchell J. Nathan, Alibali is studying how algebra teachers in Madison middle schools gesture and whether doing so influences learning.
“When prospective teachers learn what to do, they very rarely learn about gestures,” says Alibali, director of the UW’s Cognitive Development and Communication Lab and one of the world’s experts on gestures. “It’s not something that’s a focus of professional development for teachers ... but we believe that it’s really important for helping students make connections in the classroom.”
The team from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research had some work to do when it came to convincing the reviewers of a grant proposal that teachers actually could learn to change or enhance their gestures. After all, how do you alter what most people consider random or unconscious behavior? But a small pilot study found that, after going through a simple, five-minute tutorial, teachers used more gestures to link concepts in a lesson involving a pan balance. Teachers easily incorporated the hand movements they were shown, including physically linking the fulcrum of the balance with the equal sign of a related equation.
The difference between a math student understanding a lesson or not being able to solve the problem at all could come down to the wave of a hand. It’s not magic — it’s a matter of getting educators to talk, and teach, with gestures.
UW-Madison psychology professor Martha Alibali calls the concept “visual scaffolding.” Along with curriculum and instruction professor Eric Knuth and educational psychology professor Mitchell J. Nathan, Alibali is studying how algebra teachers in Madison middle schools gesture and whether doing so influences learning.
“When prospective teachers learn what to do, they very rarely learn about gestures,” says Alibali, director of the UW’s Cognitive Development and Communication Lab and one of the world’s experts on gestures. “It’s not something that’s a focus of professional development for teachers ... but we believe that it’s really important for helping students make connections in the classroom.”
The team from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research had some work to do when it came to convincing the reviewers of a grant proposal that teachers actually could learn to change or enhance their gestures. After all, how do you alter what most people consider random or unconscious behavior? But a small pilot study found that, after going through a simple, five-minute tutorial, teachers used more gestures to link concepts in a lesson involving a pan balance. Teachers easily incorporated the hand movements they were shown, including physically linking the fulcrum of the balance with the equal sign of a related equation.
The study’s goal is to understand what gestures are effective and then potentially “come up with ways to help foster that in other teachers,” says Alibali, who has a longtime interest in kids’ learning. Early algebra lessons are fertile ground for examining visual scaffolding, since teachers are showing students new ways to represent equations, such as graphs and tables.
One sixth-grade math teacher Alibali and Nathan studied used more gestures for complex parts of the lesson and then kicked her gesturing into high gear when students started asking questions or showing in other ways that they were confused. “It seemed that when the teacher realized there’s a trouble spot here, then she just naturally turned to using [gestures] to make her point,” Alibali says.
Although Alibali says the research hasn’t made her hyperaware of her own gesturing, she does carefully consider how she is using her hands when teaching in a classroom loaded with distractions. “Instruction is really about communication,” she says, “and if we can understand things that make communication more effective, then that can help us.”
— Jenny Price ’96
One sixth-grade math teacher Alibali and Nathan studied used more gestures for complex parts of the lesson and then kicked her gesturing into high gear when students started asking questions or showing in other ways that they were confused. “It seemed that when the teacher realized there’s a trouble spot here, then she just naturally turned to using [gestures] to make her point,” Alibali says.
Although Alibali says the research hasn’t made her hyperaware of her own gesturing, she does carefully consider how she is using her hands when teaching in a classroom loaded with distractions. “Instruction is really about communication,” she says, “and if we can understand things that make communication more effective, then that can help us.”
— Jenny Price ’96
Cyberlanguage
China has the world’s fastest-growing economy, so it’s no wonder that employees of some of the state’s top companies are clamoring to learn its language.
UW-Madison’s Language Institute debuted a three-credit online conversational Chinese course for business professionals this semester. The course, which includes students who are working full time while attending the School of Business evening MBA program, proved so popular that enrollment quickly maxed out, and some people were turned away.
Students partner with classmates via an online voice-chat tool to complete assignments and practice their Chinese conversation skills by speaking regularly with the course instructor. Lessons also cover cultural beliefs and practices through scenarios such as formal introductions and eating at a Chinese restaurant. For more information, visit www.languageinstitute.wisc.edu.
— J. P.
UW-Madison’s Language Institute debuted a three-credit online conversational Chinese course for business professionals this semester. The course, which includes students who are working full time while attending the School of Business evening MBA program, proved so popular that enrollment quickly maxed out, and some people were turned away.
Students partner with classmates via an online voice-chat tool to complete assignments and practice their Chinese conversation skills by speaking regularly with the course instructor. Lessons also cover cultural beliefs and practices through scenarios such as formal introductions and eating at a Chinese restaurant. For more information, visit www.languageinstitute.wisc.edu.
— J. P.
B-School Boot Camp
Summer program opens door to entrepreneurship.
When Greg Pepping MSx’09 returned from his Peace Corps service in Uganda, he knew two things. “I wanted to work in water purification,” he says, “and I wanted to use science to produce something real.” The UW’s new Entrepreneurial Boot Camp is helping him do both.
Launched last summer, the boot camp is a one-week program in which graduate students in the sciences — people such as Pepping, who’s pursuing a degree in environmental chemistry and technology — learn to turn their research into a working enterprise. It’s a skill set that is often unfamiliar to the UW’s researchers.
“If you look at campus, you see that there are a lot of people working in engineering or in the sciences who see entrepreneurship as one of the avenues by which their idea or invention can work its way into the world,” says Dan Olszewski, director of the business school’s Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship. “But they don’t really know what all goes into the entrepreneurial process. We wanted to give them an opportunity to learn something about it — to learn what they don’t know and what they need to know.”
Sponsored by the School of Business, the Weinert Center and the cross-campus Initiative for Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship (INSITE), the camp brought together forty-five graduate students to discuss only the problems involved in translating research into a working venture. That level of focus was important, says Anne Miner, faculty director of INSITE, to help the students escape their research demands.
When Greg Pepping MSx’09 returned from his Peace Corps service in Uganda, he knew two things. “I wanted to work in water purification,” he says, “and I wanted to use science to produce something real.” The UW’s new Entrepreneurial Boot Camp is helping him do both.
Launched last summer, the boot camp is a one-week program in which graduate students in the sciences — people such as Pepping, who’s pursuing a degree in environmental chemistry and technology — learn to turn their research into a working enterprise. It’s a skill set that is often unfamiliar to the UW’s researchers.
“If you look at campus, you see that there are a lot of people working in engineering or in the sciences who see entrepreneurship as one of the avenues by which their idea or invention can work its way into the world,” says Dan Olszewski, director of the business school’s Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship. “But they don’t really know what all goes into the entrepreneurial process. We wanted to give them an opportunity to learn something about it — to learn what they don’t know and what they need to know.”
Sponsored by the School of Business, the Weinert Center and the cross-campus Initiative for Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship (INSITE), the camp brought together forty-five graduate students to discuss only the problems involved in translating research into a working venture. That level of focus was important, says Anne Miner, faculty director of INSITE, to help the students escape their research demands.
“There’s serious pressure on students’ time,” she says. “We wanted them to be able to get away from the lab and their own departmental daily demands, so we came up with this model. We told them it would be like getting on a cruise ship — they wouldn’t be able to get off for a week.”
The camp offered lessons in how to recognize opportunities, organize, and develop financial tools. Instructors included not only faculty, but also representatives from the university’s own main technology transfer organization, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and some of the UW’s most successful entrepreneurial alumni, such as Steven Burrill ’66, founder of the biotechnology investment firm Burrill and Company, and John Morgridge ’55, former chair of Cisco Systems. Morgridge provided funding to help the program get off the ground.
The goal of the week, according to Miner, is to get students to think about practical applications for their academic skills. “Our view is that entrepreneurship isn’t only about turning science into a startup company, though that’s certainly a crucial pathway that we emphasized,” she says. “But we want to help students answer the question of how to create social value out of their laboratory science.”
— John Allen
The camp offered lessons in how to recognize opportunities, organize, and develop financial tools. Instructors included not only faculty, but also representatives from the university’s own main technology transfer organization, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and some of the UW’s most successful entrepreneurial alumni, such as Steven Burrill ’66, founder of the biotechnology investment firm Burrill and Company, and John Morgridge ’55, former chair of Cisco Systems. Morgridge provided funding to help the program get off the ground.
The goal of the week, according to Miner, is to get students to think about practical applications for their academic skills. “Our view is that entrepreneurship isn’t only about turning science into a startup company, though that’s certainly a crucial pathway that we emphasized,” she says. “But we want to help students answer the question of how to create social value out of their laboratory science.”
— John Allen
Collection
Catch of the day
An ordinary midsummer stroll through the UW’s Zoological Museum in Noland Hall in 2005 led curator Paula Holahan to an extraordinary discovery. A series of keyholes under the exhibit cases along a first-floor corridor caught her eye. Curious, she dug up the keys and unearthed the contents. She discovered box after box filled with a sea of intricate glass sculptures of marine invertebrate animals — jellyfish trailing masses of tentacles, spiny spherical radiolarians, sea anemones bristling with tiny tentacles. The delicate figurines were incredibly detailed but beginning to crumble with age.
The sculptures were created by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, a nineteenth-century father and son team of German glassmakers who preserved an impressive degree of scientific accuracy, even modeling the tiniest creatures at six hundred–to one thousand–times actual size to show fine detail, Holahan says. Purchased in 1890, the collection was packed away during one of the museum’s moves and forgotten.
Now showing their age, the models must be cleaned and repaired before they can be publicly displayed. “They should not be disturbed or moved until they can be properly conserved,” Holahan says. Restoring the collection will not be a simple task. The fragility of the figurines and deterioration of the handcrafted glass and glues will make the undertaking much like restoring artwork. The models are currently too brittle to exhibit and must remain in storage until conservation measures are funded and completed. Holahan hopes to find someone interested in sponsoring the repairs before the effects of age become irreversible.
— Jill Sakai
An ordinary midsummer stroll through the UW’s Zoological Museum in Noland Hall in 2005 led curator Paula Holahan to an extraordinary discovery. A series of keyholes under the exhibit cases along a first-floor corridor caught her eye. Curious, she dug up the keys and unearthed the contents. She discovered box after box filled with a sea of intricate glass sculptures of marine invertebrate animals — jellyfish trailing masses of tentacles, spiny spherical radiolarians, sea anemones bristling with tiny tentacles. The delicate figurines were incredibly detailed but beginning to crumble with age.
The sculptures were created by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, a nineteenth-century father and son team of German glassmakers who preserved an impressive degree of scientific accuracy, even modeling the tiniest creatures at six hundred–to one thousand–times actual size to show fine detail, Holahan says. Purchased in 1890, the collection was packed away during one of the museum’s moves and forgotten.
Now showing their age, the models must be cleaned and repaired before they can be publicly displayed. “They should not be disturbed or moved until they can be properly conserved,” Holahan says. Restoring the collection will not be a simple task. The fragility of the figurines and deterioration of the handcrafted glass and glues will make the undertaking much like restoring artwork. The models are currently too brittle to exhibit and must remain in storage until conservation measures are funded and completed. Holahan hopes to find someone interested in sponsoring the repairs before the effects of age become irreversible.
— Jill Sakai
Weather Aficionado
Undergrad puts his fascination for forecasts to use in the big leagues.
Driven by a passion for weather ignited before most kids learn how to read, undergraduate Jordan Gerth x’09 has taken a lead role in a project that makes UW-Madison weather research tools available to frontline forecasters in Wisconsin and around the country.
The UW’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) has been collaborating for years with state National Weather Service (NWS) offices to translate weather research into more accurate forecasts. Now Gerth, an atmospheric and oceanic sciences major, has provided a fresh perspective for the partnership by figuring out how to accommodate the intricate software interface used by NWS forecasters, allowing direct computer access to the university’s wealth of satellite meteorology resources.
“The project would be nothing if it were not for Jordan’s motivation, hard work, and expertise,” says UW-Madison research meteorologist Scott Bachmeier, who helps coordinate the the scientific aspects.
Even before kindergarten, Gerth remembers, he clipped forecasts from the newspaper and compared them to reality. By seventh grade, he had convinced his middle school to acquire a weather station so that he could track weather patterns, and by high school, he was working as an intern at the NWS forecast office in Milwaukee. When SSEC hired him as a college freshman, Gerth leveraged that earlier experience to begin work on the project that would enhance the relationship between university researchers and NWS forecasters.
Driven by a passion for weather ignited before most kids learn how to read, undergraduate Jordan Gerth x’09 has taken a lead role in a project that makes UW-Madison weather research tools available to frontline forecasters in Wisconsin and around the country.
The UW’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) has been collaborating for years with state National Weather Service (NWS) offices to translate weather research into more accurate forecasts. Now Gerth, an atmospheric and oceanic sciences major, has provided a fresh perspective for the partnership by figuring out how to accommodate the intricate software interface used by NWS forecasters, allowing direct computer access to the university’s wealth of satellite meteorology resources.
“The project would be nothing if it were not for Jordan’s motivation, hard work, and expertise,” says UW-Madison research meteorologist Scott Bachmeier, who helps coordinate the the scientific aspects.
Even before kindergarten, Gerth remembers, he clipped forecasts from the newspaper and compared them to reality. By seventh grade, he had convinced his middle school to acquire a weather station so that he could track weather patterns, and by high school, he was working as an intern at the NWS forecast office in Milwaukee. When SSEC hired him as a college freshman, Gerth leveraged that earlier experience to begin work on the project that would enhance the relationship between university researchers and NWS forecasters.
Forecasters improve their predictions by comparing current weather data from a myriad of sources, including weather stations, weather balloons, and satellites. NWS forecasters rely on a unique processing software system to view information from many sources simultaneously. These comparisons can indicate which technique may provide the most accurate prediction.
To ensure that forecasters can easily access UW-Madison’s diverse array of satellite data, SSEC researchers need to put the information directly into the weather service’s software system. That’s where Gerth comes in. As soon as he arrived, he began to pick apart the system to get it working on his personal computer, which would allow the group to patch satellite data into the NWS system.
Not even the folks at the weather service know exactly how the computer system works, so Gerth had to guess. Almost two years after he started, he finally cracked the last bit of code. “It’s like you have a shape that has twenty-four little points on it, and you have a hole with twenty-three little points on it,” he explains. “That just-right fit is needed. There’s only one fit and it has to be perfect.”
After only six months of trial and error, Gerth was able to test different types of data in a format useful to NWS forecasters. By the end of his freshman year, the team could successfully connect to the data pipeline and begin transmitting UW data.
To ensure that forecasters can easily access UW-Madison’s diverse array of satellite data, SSEC researchers need to put the information directly into the weather service’s software system. That’s where Gerth comes in. As soon as he arrived, he began to pick apart the system to get it working on his personal computer, which would allow the group to patch satellite data into the NWS system.
Not even the folks at the weather service know exactly how the computer system works, so Gerth had to guess. Almost two years after he started, he finally cracked the last bit of code. “It’s like you have a shape that has twenty-four little points on it, and you have a hole with twenty-three little points on it,” he explains. “That just-right fit is needed. There’s only one fit and it has to be perfect.”
After only six months of trial and error, Gerth was able to test different types of data in a format useful to NWS forecasters. By the end of his freshman year, the team could successfully connect to the data pipeline and begin transmitting UW data.
“The collaboration gives us information that we can’t get anywhere else,” says Jeff Craven, science operations officer at the NWS forecast office located near Milwaukee, which has served as the project’s testing ground.
Of the products provided by UW-Madison, forecasters particularly appreciate an infrared image generated several times a day that depicts temperatures on the surface of Lake Michigan. The images help forecasters assess and predict conditions on and around the lake, such as snowfall, wind, temperatures along the shore, and the height of the waves. These images have become a primary tool for forecasters, Craven says.
As Gerth talks with forecasters and encourages them to let other NWS offices know about available satellite data, he’s gotten a good sense that they use the information. But there’s a surefire way of knowing just how much they use it.
“When the data is missing,” Craven says, “the forecasters complain.”
— Jennifer O’Leary ’06
Of the products provided by UW-Madison, forecasters particularly appreciate an infrared image generated several times a day that depicts temperatures on the surface of Lake Michigan. The images help forecasters assess and predict conditions on and around the lake, such as snowfall, wind, temperatures along the shore, and the height of the waves. These images have become a primary tool for forecasters, Craven says.
As Gerth talks with forecasters and encourages them to let other NWS offices know about available satellite data, he’s gotten a good sense that they use the information. But there’s a surefire way of knowing just how much they use it.
“When the data is missing,” Craven says, “the forecasters complain.”
— Jennifer O’Leary ’06
